The day after Thanksgiving, on the outskirts of Easton, a frenzied line of shoppers battled for deals on big-screen TVs and DVD players. Downtown, other customers quietly wandered into the Mercantile Home on Northampton Street to browse and buy handcrafted ceramic squirrels or soy candles. When the dust settled, the purveyors of the yearly big-box store product scrum looked at their sales figures and shook their heads. The National Retail Federation reported sales Thanksgiving weekend fell 11 percent from last year, with more shoppers opting for the warmth of their homes and computer keyboards to buy their holiday gifts. But in downtowns like Easton's, the Black Friday game is...

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The day after Thanksgiving, on the outskirts of Easton, a frenzied line of shoppers battled for deals on big-screen TVs and DVD players.
Downtown, other customers quietly wandered into the Mercantile Home on Northampton Street to browse and buy...

If you're ditching your family and heading to the stores on Thanksgiving, or already are digging into the online sales, here's some advice to keep you from being scammed and feeling like a turkey.
The Christmas shopping season is when seasoned scammers...

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Get your game on, shoppers, bargains await at retail outlets across the Lehigh Valley.
Thanksgiving marked the official start of the holiday shopping season, as bargain-hunters lined up for deep discounts at major store chains and malls. The Lehigh...

The early-morning bargain-hunting frenzy that once marked the start of holiday shopping on Black Friday has gone the way of the dinosaur.
With many stores opening on Thanksgiving in an ever-intensifying retail arms race with each other and online...

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It's been weeks since the Supreme Court handed down its decision in the contraception-mandate case, Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, but the pace of urgent fundraising appeals has barely slackened. Several times a day, another pops up in my email inbox. Some are...

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Native plants in the garden and in landscaping...

Monday, in the U.S. Supreme Court's much-anticipated Hobby Lobby case, swing Justice Anthony Kennedy tried to cut the unborn baby in half.
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Here's an easy way to cut through the arguments and counterarguments surrounding Monday's Hobby Lobby ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court: Think back to 2012.
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A pretty girl got Mike McGrath hooked on gardening more than 30 years ago.
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